scenario. a terrorist cell well;p finance covertly enters america. they set up their headkwauters and they become bombing munition factories and depots. a bomb rocks the u.s. capitol building. the nation's richest man is targeted in a bold assassination attempt. from a covert bio warfare lab just six miles from the white house, a bio warfare attack is launched on three american cities. the president is told by his chief adviser this is a time of fear. we have to worry that bridges and subways and buildings all around the country are going to be attacked. and the government in response puts -- forms a task force to look for these terrorists. it's headed by a new york city policemen and he goes off. with just 12 men, he tries to bring these terrorists to justice. now, this scenario that i've outlined sounds like it's a movie and it would makeb a prety good movie or it would be a game, play at the pentagon as they try to figure out what's the next terrorist attack going to be made against the homeland. but in reality, all this happened. this happened in 1915. and it's a story i tell in "dark invasion" and a story i want to share a little about tonight. the story begins really it's a time when the u.s. is still neutral while europe is at war. in germany, they've decided to target the united states. they decide that the only way to keep the united states out of the war is to bring terror to our shores. they decide that they need to stop the united states from sending arms and material to the allies who are fighting against germany. so they begin to target the united states. it's a time when the united states realizes that this is a nation full of targets. the cia has looked back on this period and they point to -- this homeland and the man who is made in charge of this defense of the homeland, captain tom tony and i'll speak about him, really is the first head of homeland security. he and his little 12-man squad are really the precursers of a homeland security network which now has 240,0p÷ people and an annual budget of $98.8 billion. it's also a time where we learn to live with fear. now, to understand where this story begins, i think we have to go back to two months before the war, before the war has broken out in europe. and we have to go to germany, berlin where walter nick lie, a major in the german army is head of the german secret service. walter served on the russian front. he sent agents deep into russia. he sent up the german spies academies and they've sent agents into france, into england and as i said, into russia. but suddenly occurs to him, as war is about to begin, he knows in a couple of months, the germans have taken their battle plans out of the safe and dusted them off, he suddenly realized we've forgotten about the united states. in the united states, as 1914, the summer of 1914 approaches, germany only has one agent in the entire country, a 70-year-old man who works in a munitions factory in new jersey and he'sab supposed to monitor e entire munitions industry of the united states. so walter realizes that something has to be done. if germany is going to win this war, which is about to break out, we have to keep the u.s. out of the war. we have to keep the u.s. military machine if it's ever built up from working against the germans, and we have to prevent the united states from sending the -- supplying the ally. so, hezppj decides that the only we can do this, only way thatcf germany can do this, is to set up a clan desen network. he summens germany's ambassadors to the united states, count yohan bernstof. he gets this mysterious summens to report back immediately to berlin for meetings. he is upset about this because he has his whole summer planned. he has a rich american wife with an estate on the north shore and has a girlfriend with her house in new port, rhode island. he figures he'll spend part of the summer with his wife because she has all the money and high tail it off to new port to spend the rest of the summer with his girlfriend and going to parties up there. now he's been summoned back to berlin and it's a bit of an inconvenience. he hopes to get it over rather quickly. he goes off to berlin and he's brought down to walter's head quarters really. it's a basement room underneath berlin and he's a little off. he's a count and ambassador and being lectured to by a major. he listens and he's tof" that he is going to head the german spy network in america. he's upset about this because he's a gentleman and a spy is little beneath him, but he realizes he's told what's at stake and then given a briefcase. in the briefcase are $150 million in treasury notes. and he's told to bring this money into the united states. he's to travel back under an assumed name. if the ship is boarded by inspectors don't let them get this money. better to throw it into the sea than to let the british get their hands on it. and so, he comes back to the united states. he brings the money with him. and he begins to set up his organization. during the day, he lives as cover, as they say in this spy business, very well. he's still going out to parties all around washington. he is still on the social circuit. po he is also has sent his agent, his military and naval partners to run this spy network. and they're based in lower manhattan around wall street and they've also been able to recruit many assets to work with them. not only is there a large german population in new york, for example, in yorkville who were sympathetic to the fatherland, but also ships had been interred in new york harbor and hoboken and these are filled with german sailors that can't get back to germany because of the war and they have nothing to do and they're looking to help the father fla fatherland in any way. this is an army that is really based in new york that's at germany's beck and call. they have $150 million to spend. so they start beginning sabotage. they set up a safe house in new york, not too far from here on west 15th street. it's funded by funds from the german government run by martha held, a former opera singer. they meet there late at night and it's a great cover to planetary ris activities because anyone who is watching it is nob surprised to see men coming and going at all hours of the night. so they begin to do this and suddenly ships are blowing up at sea, munitions factories are going up in smoke and the american authorities really don't know what's going on. is this an industrial plague of industrial accidents? is there a labor protest? they really don't suspect that germany could be behind this. then the british share some information with us. the british since the start of the war have been intercepting germany's cable. and they have broken the code. they do it in the old building. they get a whole bunch of oxford dons and cambridge dons and they are able, very ingeniously, brilliantly, in fact, to break the german code and they're reading germany's messages and they read them and they say, oh my gosh, they've declared war, even though there isn't a real declaration of war against the united states. so they pass this on to the sfral government. the man in charge of intelligence activities at that time is james poke. he has to do something about this. president wilson says, well, look into it. he really doesn't take it too seriously. polk has to figure out what to do. the fbi is at this point a very feeble organization. the men aren't even allowed to carry guns. military intelligence, naval intelligence of all due respect to any members who might be here wasn't functioning very well in 1914. so he decides,2y5h because we w to groten prep school up in new england and the new york city police chief went to groten and his chief deputy went to groten, they're all groten and harvard men, to go to the old-boy network. and he goes to them and he says, maybe you can help me with this. he trusts them when he doesn't trust people in the federal government. so arthur woods, the new york city police chief who taught at groten for a while after his graduation from harvard, he and his deputy guy skull decide that they've got just the man. he's an irish street god, tom. at this point he's heading the bomb squad. the bomb squad in those days is really not concerned with with the people who make them. and they tell him he has just run a very successful cover operation, one of the first undercover operation ever in the history of the new york city police department. a anarchist group is going to put a bomb in st. patrick's cathedral. he had one of his men infiltrate his group. they were able to grab the bomb that was left out in front and stop it from being -- stop it from exploding. from exploding. and this has given him a great5 deal of credibility with the department, so he's called to a secret meeting at the new york city police head quarters on center street, the big dome building is now luxury condominiums that go for several million dollars a piece. and in the commissioner's private office, there's a backway in the back of the building, you go up a prooit elevator into a wood panel room with the fire going and there is the commissioner and his deputy guy skull and they're telling him we have this mission for you. we want you to, in effect, be head of homeland security. they say we're going to give you a special office right across the way above a bar. you answer only to us. take the men you need. set up this group and figure out what is going+b on. so tuny is -- looks at the problem and he really doesn't quite know where to begin. the first thing he's learned he doesn't want married men in the unit. he's afraid that this will be too dangerous. and he's learning as he goes along. he's never done this before. he's never been a spy catcher. he then recruits people who speak german, but then he decides, well, i won't have any people who weren't born in this country. i don't want any german immigrants on my team because i can't trust them. he looks for a shooting range, which is in the basement of this building. it's now an $8 million co-op. the police shooting range runs for $8 million and he recruits a guy who had very good scores there, another guy he describes as being as big as the biggest building at the time. he gets guys who were good at surveillance. men who were good at tapping phones an he makes this 12-man team and they're given this ou going on. bring these terrorists, bring these germans to justice. at the same time in germany, major dnicoli is not really hay with the progress. he is a professional spy and he needed a professional agent to really run this group. so he recruits members from naval intelligence. a man by the name of -- van ritalin before the war worked in the united states and london. in london he learned how to dress. he discovered a tailer who made up outfits for him. when he worked in new york he added the von to his name. he is given this mission to go to the united states and wage wars, as he puts it, against america, against the 48 states. he describes himself as a dark invader and he comes to the united states under a pseudo name, baring a swiss passport. he has codes so he can communicate back with germany. he establishes himself in the new york yacht club onáf 44th street. he gets a suite of rooms there and at night he's out on the town in white ties going to parties, very successful banker, but during the day, from an office down on wall street, he's running a sabotage campaign against the united states and a terror campaign. he is a spider spinning his web and the web he's spinning is a very ingenious one and ultimately tuny and van ritalin are involved in a cat and mouse game as was mentioned when i was introduced warner brothers is doing a movie about "dark invasion" and the crux of the movie, as has been written and sort of taken my story which is true, taken some dramatic liberties, the script does work really well is really a cat and mouse game between von ritalin and tom tuny, between these two very complex personalities. each one is ruthless and determined in their own way and it's a real battle. the plotsyw that von ritalin sps in the united states -- let me give you an idea of some of them. one is an ingenious invention is to sabotage ships at sea as they leave the new york harbor after they've been loaded with ammunitions that will go to france or england or russia. one of his men invents what's called a cigar bomb. it's a piece of metal tubing about the size of a cigar. in the middle of it is a bit of copperplating and the other side is acidthat will eat through the plating in the middle in a number of days. they throw this into the bowels. many of the stevedores are irish and they're willing -- because any enemy of england is their friend. they're willing to work with these german terrorists and they put them in the ships going off to sea and then two days out at blow up and the evidence doesn't exist anymore because it's all been come busted in the explosion and tuny has to figure out how this is done. another plot he haslw to deal wh is germ warfare. in 1907 in a former stables that was turned into a veterinary clinic outside of berlin, the german government had begun experimenting with an tracks and glander. when mustard gas begins being used in the battlefields of europe, why not bring it here to the united states? why not use that in america? the real target is war horses. the corrals of horses that have been gathered up and being shipped to the war that are so necessary for fighting in world war i. they decide, we'll poison these animals. but there are ancillary incidents and people die from germ warfare in the united states. the main agent who is doing this is a doctor. this doctor is this sort of enemy agent that we still worry about today. he was born in the united states then he goes off to germany to study medicine. he's living in germany when the germans. but he has an american passport. his father, in fact, won the congressional medal of honor in the civil war and now he's also of german decent and he's -- they're willing now to help germany. so he comes to the united states. he's given money by nicoli and he sets up a germ warfare factory, in effect. he sets it up six miles from the white house in a house he's r%%kur' the basement and he's -- his sister lives upstairs and in the basement he and his brother who used to run a brewery are brewing up vats or test tubes really of an tracksn and glanders. he brought the cultures over t>'s producing they recruit interns to spread them in the port of new york, in baltimore, and in new orleans. and there's a germ warfare attack on three american cities. people die as these germs are spread. there have been several deaths that only after the war did the u.s. authorities are being caused by germ warfare. and tom tuny has to try to stop this. an attack on america that he does not quite understand. then there's another (lot, rather interesting. the assassination plot on jp morgan jr. jp morgan jr. is now heading a consortium of banks that are lending over $900 million to the allies, to russia, france, and largely england. and walter nicoli and van ritalin are going to stop this. and the way to stop these loans, which are funding the allied war is to get rid of jp morgan jr. but that brings them to find the perfect person to do this, which turns out to be a man by the name of eric munter. in 1906 eric munter is a professor at harvard. he is teaching german there and is also expecting his second child. but his wife is having a difficult pregnancy. he leaves his harvard office everyday, he goes home to see her and he spoon feeds her every night this special broth that he's made to help her through this difficult pregnancy and÷+ he's a very solicitous husband. the neighbors talk about how much he cares about his wife. the nurses report him. oh, professor munter, he cares so much about her. and despite her illness, she is able to give birth and everything seems okay but then four days afterwards she dies. and munter is filled with grief and he decides that he will bring the baby -- the newborn baby and his other infant baby with him to his in-law's house in chicago. they'll bury his wife leona there. and he goes up to chicago with the nurses and the two babies. after the funeral, he tells his father-in-law, i just need to think about things. let me spend two days and then i'll be back. he never comes back. and while he's away, the cambridge, massachusetts police come looking for him. it seems the autopsy on the organs that were taken out of his wife's body shows that she was poisoned. the broth that he was#] feeding her is arsenic. the harvard professor is now on the lam. he goes by frank holt. he goes down to mexico, hangs out two years there. he works as a bookkeeper for a mining company then slowly begins to come back to the united states. he enrolls ingtsvu a really cat college in -- outside dallas. meets his new wife there. her name is also leona. he finds another leona and her father is a methodist minister in dallas, comes from a very respectable family and he does very well. he graduates and becomes an ie tinry teacher, working his way back to cornell university, back to the ivy league, a professor there again under this assumed name. no one has noticed him. he has a new wife and he thinks everything is fine. when war breaks out in europe, he's overwhelmed by this. he decides what the united states is doing, sending arms to the allies is not right. he has to do something about it. when the term ends, he sends his wife and their baby daughter down to dallas to see his father-in-law, the reverend and he's going to go to new york to do something about this. pretty much like lee harvey oswald did when he went to the cuban embassy in mexico. he volunteers his services to the german cause and he becomes really an agent for von ritalin. the details only come out after the fact. later tom tuny is able to put things together. holt, who originally was munter comes down from cornell to new york city with only $5 in his possession. he's able to buy a car, stay in a hotel, rent a cottage out in long island as he does reconnaissance of jp morgan's mansion out there. he's able to buy 178 pounds of dynamite and he also has a great cover identity. he goes around as a member of the summer new york social register, so he is able to get into all the great houses of long island because they all want to be listed in the social register and he's able to do reconnaissance of jp morgan's mansion on the north shore. and then he decides to launch his plot. first step in this plot is he plans -- goes up to washington on july 2nd, 1915 and plants a bomb in the u.s. capitol building. this bomb goes off 10:00 p.m. at night. it does great damage to the u.s. capitol building and hav ng accomplished this, he then goes the next morning, takes the train back to new york and makes his way to jp morgan's mansion. he introduced himself as the reporter to the social directory, but jp morgan's butler, physic says, this doesn't seem right. the guy looks weird and wild. munter takes out a revolver, forces his way in and chases the butler down the great hall of the mansion. finally he sees jp morgan's children, grabs them and starts walking up the staircase. jp morgan's wife sees this man with a gun on her two children, she screams, that alerts morgan and he very courageously throws himself right in front of holt. holt shoots him once, then another time, twice. then the gun jams. there are serious wounds and then he falls on top -- he falls on top of%u the assassin while e butler and the rest of the crew come up and beat him unconscious. so tom tuny is brought in to do the questioning of this assassin. and the interrogation -- and i pulled a lot of it because the transcripts are available in my book are really reminiscent of lee harvey oswald. he is an assassin who isn't saying anything other than he's innocent. gives great many smirking replies to the interrogation and he goes off to see what will happen and he tells the guards b careful. put him under solitary confinement. make sure -- keep a guard on him at all times, but take him to the jail. while he's in the jail, the first report is there's a shot and he's been killed by a lone gunman, an assassin stuck a rifle into the jail cell. the next day this is contradicted. it says he got on top of his jail cell and jumped down an smashed his head open but there's náautopsy. police chief woods is saying there's more people involved. the bottom that he ignited the capitolí÷ is a very sophisticat bomb. he knew nothing about making or fabricating bombs and then mysteriously the story disappears. it just stops. and tuny becomes convinced that the u.s. president, president wilson is just not prepared to go to war. they don't want america, if this comes out, america will have no choice to go to war. at this point, in 1915, america is just not ready for it. but, within two years, wilson's patience breaks away and america goes to war. tuny and his men are drafted into the military intelligence. he becomes major tuny. his squadron now army officers and they are now policing the homeland. it would be wrong to say that one event made president wilson change his mind, convince the man who is soex complex as wils to go to war. there was black tom. the zimmerman telegram that you'll read about in the guns of august suspension before. but, to give some insight into what pushed the united states into war is a flag day speech made in june, 1917, just months after the declaration. and it's a very candid speech by president wilson. he seems deeply grieved. he has taken what the german ambassador has done, what the german spy network has done as being very personal. he's still shocked that gentlemen would behave this way. he said they would come into our homes as our friends and then betray this country. what self respecting nation should not go to war. and so because of terrorism largely, america goes to war in 1917. now, it's nearly a century later and, you know, terrorism, as i said, has become part of our lives. we still have to deal with it. and yet what i find so troubling, soi) disturbing that one of the chief problems that tuny and police chief woods had 1916 is still a problem here in the united states today. let me explain. after the war, chief -- police chief arthur woods said, america can never be caught napping again. our intelligence agencies must be federalized and banned together. but he also said, what the last war taught us is that america couldn't -- and that new york city, rather, could not count on the federal government to protect us. that's why i had to take a new york city policeman. that's why i had to take tom tuny and appoint him to protect this &ñcity. after 9/11, ray kelly, former new york city cop, former marine, he takes the job and he has the same reaction. he says, it's all doom and gloom and we can't count on the feds to protect us. he makes his own intelligence network. he takes a former director of operations from the cia, brings him to new york city and then has him set up agencies representing new york in various capitols, all different capitols around the world so that new york will get the information it needs right away without having to rely on the federal gover'2q9 marathon ke again raises the issue. the fbi knew about these two brothers. why didn't they pass it on to the police? so, here we have this same concern, the same concern that was bothering police chief woods, captain tuny is now bothering the people in charge of new york city and other cities today. intelligence is only valuable if it's shared. we have all the eyes and ears in the world listening to us, who knows who is listening to me speak rftonight. but if this information is not shared with the people who are protecting our various cities, it's really not helping the cause too much. and what makes this particularly frightening is that while we have not cured this problem, our enemies have gotten much more powerful. you think of german doctor sitting in his little lab and chevy chase making anthrax with his test tubes. mobile labs in where in the middle east and brought to the united states. we livew!sq in an open society e we have super bowls and stadium baseball stadiums, shopping malls, office complexes where anyone can enter. we think of our assassin eric munter -- he carried a suitcase with a bomb into the capitol building. now you'll have a suitcase or a backpack filled with a tactical nuclear weapon. when you think about anthrax, they worried about anthrax in the subways in 1915. that was brought to president wilson's attention. in 1915, 375,000 people rode the new york city subways. today it's 4.3 million everyday. this is scary stuff. and unless the people who are in charge of our security address the problems that tom tuny and police chief woods had to address in 1915, unless they address them today, things are going to get scarier because one thing history has taught us with a grimúç inevitability, america the homeland, will be a target again, and let's hope we'll be prepared for when it happens. and one way to prepare for it is to learn the lessons that tunney learned in 1915. thank you. and i'll answer all the questions you have, or try to. >> thank you for the lecture. i've read an expose recently about the whole intelligence foul ups before, during, and after 9/11. and it seems even though kelly set up his intelligence unit, one of the top people in it was from one of the national intelligence units and they didn't want to cooperate with him. some people didn't like him, or they had problems with him. and they didn't want to deal with it. even though there was a problem festering, they just didn't want to, you know, cooperate. it's a whole mental thing with them. >> the lack of cooperation between intelligence agencies is the fatal flaw in any system. it happened here in 9/11. it happened in the middle east. in the october war. in israel, where israel was taken by surprise. if the information is not shared with the correct agencies, all the electronic intelligence gathering facilities you have are really not going to accomplish what they're meant for. >> thank you. two questions. the cigar bomb seemed so small. how could they do so much damage when, you know, to the munitions? tell us about the munitions that were affected, and also, who was target ed by the germ warfare? >> the first question, how can a cigar bomb be so effective? if you place -- start a fire in a ship filled with munitions being shipped overseas, they're highly combustible. also, as tunney found out, which i didn't know until i read -- sugar is very inflammatory. it blows up. bales of raw sugar. they would put it in there, too. so these were really fires that would break out and then spread. the black tarm arsenal, which is over in new jersey, which wound up causing millions of dollars worth of damage and was felt, it blew up in new jersey and the windows of the 42nd street library were blown out, that's how powerful the explosion was. and it killed three people. that was also masterminded. he set the original plan for that, and that was a more standard bomb, but the ingenious part of the cigar bombs is they would disappear. you wouldn't see it. so for the first year it was happening, they weren't sure if this was caused by a labor dispute or an angry seaman or whatever. one other thing about the cigar bombs, von ritlinmanaged to convince the russians under his assumed identity that he would buy supplies for them. so he would take their money, millions of dollars to buy supplies and then he would say it was being loaded onto a ship. he would then have the ship blown up at sea, so a, the russians wouldn't get the supplies, and b, was able to keep the money because he didn't even have to buy it. he was very ingenious and very ruthless. he wound up in the atlanta penitentiary for 15 years. the other part of the question, i'm not quite sure? >> germ warfare? >> here in the united states, what they did, the chemical factory, first, the dupont factory, the factories in new jersey, various firework factories and every ship leaving for sea, they went to the park and did the horse corrals there, the horses going off to europe, they did that, also by the new york ports. they really wanted to stop war material from going over to the allies, and that's how they then moved on to jp morgan, because he was supplying the money to buy it. >> one of the interesting things i note in your book is how this really didn't become a hysterical attempt to crack down on, you know, all german americans or kind of like a witch hunt. as later happened with the red scare around 1920, so i wonder why isn't that? they learned from tunney, you know, we can do this small. we can target just the right people and get them, and there's no need to, like, round up thousands of people. >> i think -- well, i would disagree a bit because they didn't realize what was happening at the time. later, when they figured out that these were german americans were working with the german government, that led to the internment of japanese. this was brought up in congress as a rationale for the way they acted in world war i. it's just that they didn't quite understand -- they were learning. tom tunney had become head of homeland security, had to understand everything, and he was a street cop who had a lot of guts and was inventive and tenacious, but he had to learn on the job. and also the press -- and part of his edict was to keep this out of the press. and the press really wasn't brought into it until afterwards. >> on the security and freedom debate, what do the naysayers tell you at conferences and things? >> the naysayers who are against security? well, back then or now? now. against security. well, i mean, it's a very delicate balance. as i said before, we live in an open society. we have to balance our freedom and our privacy against our protection. the classic example is, do you want to be patted down before you go on an airline or take your chances? and at the same time, my kids, i did a piece for the wall street journal several months ago called generation lockdown. i have three kids in college and they're all experienced one way or another being locked down, having to worry about different threats. they have grown up living through 9/11, and the boston bombing. you know, this is part of their dna. and so you have to worry about the freedoms that will allow these children, my children, your children, to grow up and be who they want to be. at the same time, we have to protect them. so it's, again, it's a delicate balance. >> i am interested in your vocabulary that goes through this fascinating story. you constantly use the words terrorist and terrorism. i'm interested in that. we usually use it to refer to events like 9/11, the london subway bombing, the madrid bombing, the ballet bombing. so all of which were primarily targeting civilians in order to spread terror among the civilian targets. these attacks were primarily, i know there were some exceptions, there's the morgan assassination attempt, but they're basically against war shipping, war munitions, war horses. primary, the civilians tend to be more collateral damage. would you also use terrorism to describe the sabotage programs of the british soe or the american sos in world war ii? though we ordinarily reserve terrorism for programs that primarily spread terror among civilians? >> you raise an interesting point. i'm using the vocabulary that's used by the cia. the cia in their inhouse journal has referred to this as the first terrorist attack on america. i think it's too narrow to say that american citizens were not targeted. something like 54 people were just workers in the various munitions factory blew up. black tom, there were three deaths. thee were all civilians. the people killed in the ancillary amtrak attacks on the horses were civilians. this was basically an attack on our homeland. jp morgan, a civilian. i think when people come to our shores and we're not in a state of war and try to do damage to american lives, that's terrorism. and that's how i would define it. and i think semantics are really not that important. it's a threat that america has to face and how we deal with it. >> i wondered if you could discuss pk, because i would imagine he was the man they contacted when they wanted to find a murderer for what was his name in long island? >> i'm not quite sure. who -- >> the guy who worked for the german shipping company, the german -- mr. conag. >> he worked for the hamburg-american lines, and he was a real brute of a man. he was the enforcer. the german-american line sort of ran the port of new york on the west side, the west side ports. and he took his whole crew of tough guys with him to work for germany. he received a great deal of the money that german ambassador had to spread, and tom tunney had to follow him around. ultimately, he gets the information on him and he discovers, he goes up to his apartment up by columbia university, and he has a secret diary where he's recorded in german and in english meticulous prussian fashion, how he superintends hspends his day, everyone he meets with, all the things he wants to do, that he's going to stop smoking, stop drinking, and by the way, i'm also going to place a bomb on this ship on such and such a date. his key operative are he gives code names to d-1, d-2, d-3. part of the story that i tell in dark invasion is how tunney and his men track down these various operatives once they have this code book and how they, too, have to break this code and find these people. >> yeah, fdr was undersecretary of the navy. he had his own private force of enforcement and investigators. i know that he was basically tracking down the immorality of the american naval people and he got censured by the congress for doing that, which wasn't thought of as that important. i'm wondering, when the war began, did he still maintain this investigatory squad -- squad, i would call them, or did that come at all into your -- >> no, it didn't. it does sort of come into the book i'm writing right now, which is a world war ii story where fdr is now president, and he's using his friends, really, jacob aster, and robert vanderbilt, they have a group of very well connected men who work out of a room that the vanderbilts own in a building on 63rd street, and they're an informal spy network before america goes to war, trying to put the pieces together for fdr, before pearl harbor. >> you mention one of the german culprits, and you said that his father was a civil war hero. >> a medal of honor winner. >> right, and you said they were involved. was the father involved in this? >> the father was not involved. his brother and his sister were involved. the father died, but you know, you pick up the papers today, and the fear is that someone from isis will have an american passport, will be an american kid from detroit or wherever and he's now going to work with the enemy and he'll be able to go right through security because he's an american. there's no way to stop him. well, that's what the germans did. they got -- and tom dillinger, who was an american citizen, had an american passport, was able to come here, didn't have to travel under an assumed name and was able to bring with him in a little medical bag, the cultures for anthrax, and he set up this covert lab six miles from the white house. >> right. you mentioned the film that was made. i think i vaguely remember seeing it, just for nostalgia purposes, do you remember the stars, who was starring in that? >> the film i was referring to is the film that is going to be made of my book. >> i think there was something similar maim. >> nothing similar, no way. >> somebody was exploding certain things on ships during wartime. >> this will have bradley cooper dashing about very excitedly. >> it wasn't wartime, thank you. >> hello. you talked about what has been done by this particular network. what's your interpretation, how effective this was? because obviously, this is an act that brought us into war against the germans with devastating effect. >> yes. you raise also a very good point. many ways, while it was effective in the shortterm, in that it stopped supplies going to europe, it resulted in deaths of about 100 americans, tens of millions of dollars of damage. but in many ways, it lost the war. it was a very narrow strategy for germany because it got the united states into the war. it energized the united states. i mean, what our enemies think today, they think if they blow up the world trade center, we're going to be cowards and we'll back down and a muslim caliphate will go up and america will be overwhelmed. they don't understand the american character. the american character has a real streak of don't tread on me. and this energized america. >> i have a second question. have you looked into the covert operations that the british were undertaking in america at the same time to get us into the war? i mean, they weren't exactly, you know, hands off. they put a massive propaganda and covert operation activity into getting us into the war. >> from what i have been able to discover, britain was very active in world war ii, before the united states was in the war. rockefeller center, they set up the british security coordination units. and that was really a propaganda operation and a spy operation. they ran british spies here in the united states. many of them with the knowledge of j. edgar hoover and people in our government, to try to help bring us into the war. in world war i, they weren't that organized in the sense. they had a man who was running things under the cover of a film executive, and he was trying to get propaganda out. they had a former naval captain, guy gaunt, who was a member of mi-6, and he was based here in wall street, and he was in communication with arthur wood and tunney, and he was providing information. at that point, the federal government was so eager to get information that they needed the british help. america might not have discovered for another two years really what was going on, that this was a german plot against america, if the british hadn't passed on the information they had gotten from breaking the german codes. but sure, britain was determined to get the united states into the war, and they succeeded, and they were effective in doing it, in both wars. >> yes, i don't understand the relationship between bombing the capitol building and then trying to assassinate jp morgan jr. in what sounds like a very amateur assassination attempt. why would he, you know, one day bomb the capitol, and then -- i just don't understand the logic of it? >> well, the logic was one of terror. and terror has no logic. in the sense the germans had this man who was their patsy. they could tell him what to do, and if he wanted to put a bomb in the u.s. capitol building, he thought that would excite things and cause terror, they provided him with the weapon. they said, let's see what happens. he's not one of our professionals. we have a hands-off relationship with him. and then they could use him, this sort of guided weapon, to get jp morgan. if it works, great. if it doesn't work, we'll see what happens next. >> he had an american wife, lived here. can you tell us about why these people didn't get or have american citizenship? what kind of issue that was in those days. >> he was a member of the german government. he was a german ambassador to the united states. he married -- he was here for 11 years. he was actually born in london. his father was the german ambassador of britain, and he grew up in a very rarefied atmosphere in britain and germany and then here in the united states. one of their big scams that he runs when he first comes to the united states is making phony passports for people so german sailors interred here can go back to europe and fight for germany. at that point, passports were pretty easy to get. you just send in to the secretary of state, i think he signed them all himself, and they would hire drunks from the bowery and have them pose for these passports and give them to the german sea mmen until those plots were uncovered. >> i read your book, i enjoyed it. i read it in one day. >> thank you. >> though it's more than 400 pages. what i wonder is how the germans could be so stupid. they said trust this probably psychotic psychopath to kill jp morgan, and they're not afraid just by hiring this guy, they're going to end up in a war with the united states, which i don't think was inevitable. at least they had to keep it up as long as possible. why were the germans so stupid and in a sense naive. >> i think they were naive and desperate. you could look, why hire lee harvey oswald. was he a lone gunman or recruited by some other country. would you hire someone who had gone to live in the soviet union who was so -- such a strange temperament to say the least? it's very similar. people in intelligence agencies don't make the wisest decisions sometimes, but it almost worked. jp morgan jr. was severely wounded. eric munter managed to get into his house. he managed to evade the authorities who were looking for him for over a decade for murdering his wife. he had a very successful spy. >> yes. i wouldn't say the germans were that stupid. but first of all, von pappen is a three-tiered operation going on. you're trying to prevent munitions ships going through, and taken out morgan wasn't a bad idea because he's tied with the british, who are critical, and getting shot twice, they nearly succeeded. but there's also what you haven't mentioned is the indian conspiracy. from punjab in particular and also the irish connection, too. all under von pappen, as i said it. he was indicted later on, but he got away with it because he was canceler. you know, the incitement of rebellion in ireland and in india, i mean, the home base seems to be new york. oddly, it's a safe haven. it's not a bad idea what they're trying to do. obviously, it kind of backfired a bit, but what they initially were trying to do made perfect sense. >> the home base, from my understanding, would have been berlin. and water nicholai sent out all his agents, pulling as many strings as he could. he was trying to create confusion as best he could all over the globe, in ireland, india, and in new york. jp morgan was key. under jp morgan, this consocm was put together that raised $900 million, 1915 dollars, for the allies. and with him gone, the consortium would have fallen apart. and for a while, it looked like he was severely wounded, but he did recover. and if the gun hadn't jammed after the two bullets had entered his abdomen, he might have succeeded and been killed and history might have been different. >> just a point of information for one of your other answers, the british security coordinating commission, which was led by sir william stevenson, who was canadian, whose wife was american, did not have as his primary objective to bring america into the waurb. it was coordinating espionage activities with actually colonel dawnivonovan and with the peopl fdr. >> i would respectfully disagree with you. stevenson mandate, as was given to him and as they made clear in the proviso of the british security coordination unit, was to bring america into the war. after america goes to war, then they're working more hand in hand with donovan. but before that, it came from really, they had a different agenda. >> we disagree, both of us. okay. >> you have a nice bibliog rfy. how did you get your hands on this stuff and could you have done it 10, 20 years ago? >> i was raising my kids 10, 20 years ago, but so much -- one of the things that is interesting to me when i try to tell these stories, and talking about what i have done. i did a book on the uconn gold rush about a detective. i did a book called "american lightning" about the bombing of the l.a. times. these are sort of history that are true stories yet they're written with drama and suspense. the way to do this is you have to be able to tell what the characters are thinking. i look for subjects where there are diaries, where there are memoirs, actual people who talked about what they did so i can say what's on their mind. tunney wrote a book called "throttle "about his career as a policeman, so i'm able to say what he felt about it. all this information is out there. the internet makes it really easy. you can sit in a room and pull up all these books right on your screen and read them, and it's like being brought back to the times themselves. so it's all out there. it's finding a way of putting it together, finding the characters who will drive you through this narrative. >> one of the little things you haven't talked about today is the rutter bomb, which i found fascinating. >> that was another ingenious device. and it was used against allies, shipping. what happened was a german engineer was on the front in europe, in france, and the shells are falling. he thinks to himself, i've got to get out of here, how can i get out of the front? it's too dangerous. i'm not going to survive this war. so here's an engineer by training, and he comes up with this device, which he then is able to show to the intelligence officer of his unit, makes its way to berlin, sent to the united states, and it's a rutter bomb. it attaches. you go onto, underwater to a ship in port. you attach this little bomb to the rutter, and it gets charged up, as the man steers the boat out of the harbor, he's putting the fuse into the bomb. and it explodes when it goes out of sea. that's the rudder bomb. he worked out of a boarding house in new jersey, and tunney and his men track him down. >> i'm going to assume that the germans knew about the academics' real identity and not just his new identity? >> it's an interesting question. i would like to think they did, but one never knows. i mean, the man was all over the place. and i think they saw that here's a chance where we can take this guy who is out of control. we can pull the strings, but we can pull them from a distance and send him out and have him do our bidding, but we won't get the blame. because what they were doing, you know, if germany was involved in the assassination of jp morgan, that would have brought the united states into war. that's why he had to be eliminated. that's why there's been -- when my book came out, the dallas morning news did -- this is lee harvey oswald all over again. they said that's why oswald had to be eliminated, because we couldn't really trace back to whom he was really working for. there are many mysteries that haven't been solved yet. >> i have a question about how the germans chose their agents. one has the impression of people coming to the german embassy and knocking on the door and saying i want to work for germany. how did they sort through these people? how did they know some of them weren't double agents? how did they pick and choose? because i'm planning my own second career, and planning to work for an unnamed foreign power. >> what happened many times was, this was a german club on central park south, and the german military attache and the naval attache would hold court there and people would come up to them at night. when word got out von ritlin was working under a pseudonym at wall street, people would come to his office. he would see in the course of a day, 20, 30 people who have fantastic schemes. most of them he would send away, but every now and then, he would find someone who had something to offer. that's how he found the cigar bomb. so they didn't really worry about double agents because america wasn't that sophisticated yet, but they worried about crack pots, people who would give things away, who would really be caught and then spill the beans. >> there was a strange transition between 1918 to 1920 leading to palmer raids where a lot of these agents who were formally working for the german government started to work for the soviet as communists. and apparently die-hard communists. but there is -- it is very odd that it's particularly down in lower manhattan, that's where it all seemed to come to fruition. >> well, that's where the power was. that's where wall street was and where the germans set up their bases and where the hamburg-american line set up their headquarters and where they rented the offices. and as you say, after world war ii, the german agents also went off and worked for other nations, too. and after the fall of the berlin wall, the east german agents did the same. >> with all of these things you talked about, all these plans, these nefarious plans, et cetera, it finally ended up with the zimmerman telegram real disaster for the germans when it's intercepted by the british and then, you know, they're trying to convince the mexicans to come in against the united states so they can have, you know -- it's -- and it reminds me of some of the stuff that, you know, other powers including ourselves have done. some really nitwit things. where did they get -- where is the mintal thing on some of this? you don't want to irritate some of these major powers? where do the mental ideas come -- >> far be it for me to get in the mind of what makes a spy master think he can convince mexico to go to war against the united states and it's going to work, but history has also taught us a great deal of arrogance of the people in power and they think -- arrogant people think they can do whatever they want. they can change the course of history. and sometimes they do. thank you very much. [ applause ] each week, american history tv's reel america brings you archival films to help tell the story of the 20th century. >> they had improved knowledge of the soviet union, but the critical questions went unanswered. >> begin. >> on 10 august, 1960, the diagnostic flight was ready for launch. at the time diskorver 13 was launched, a number of major problems remained to be solved. achieving an acceptable orbit, operating the camera, and the all-important recovering of the payload film. >> by function only. >> on my mark, it will be t minus 5 seconds. mark. >> it quickly revealed that 13 did achieve orbit, and the initial position was correct. on the 17th orbit, the recovery pack package descended normal except for missing by 13 miles.

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